Amtrak Workers May Have Made 'Colossal' Mistake That Led to Crash

An Amtrak crash on Sunday morning occurred when a train carrying 341 people collided with a backhoe on the track near Philadelphia, killing two construction workers and injuring nearly 40 passengers. The event data recorder and video from the train have been recovered, and while the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a variety of factors that could have played into the crash—mechanical, operations, signal, and track issues among them—a source close to the investigation said that the workers made a "colossal" mistake by potentially being on the wrong line.

At present, investigators are trying to determine why the construction workers were on a line that was considered "active." Though construction work on active lines isn't uncommon—and is even routine—it is limited to workers using small or hand-held equipment, not larger machines like backhoes, which are used for excavating and digging.

Allan Zarembski, director of the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program at the University of Delaware, said workers using a backhoe should never be allowed on an active track, regardless of the circumstances. "They should have known better than to be on that track," Zarembski told CNN. "Maybe what happened was they were given permission to go on [an inactive] track, and maybe they made a mistake and went on the wrong track."

The crash along the Northeast Corridor comes less than a month after an Amtrak train traveling from Chicago to Los Angeles derailed in Kansas, injuring 32 people, and nearly one year after another Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia left eight people dead and more than 200 injured.